Oh come on, there is usually some little thing in an otherwise great or revered film that just bugs you. That you would have done better than those clowns making the movie.
I’ll go first, since it is my theard and all.
Oh and UNBOXED SPOILERS
But you should have seen these movies by now anyway.
High Noon
Great film but do you want to know what’s wrong with it? At the very end Kane takes off his badge and throws it on the ground and leaves without saying a word.
Fantastic ending right. But what bugs me is that the sound effect of the badge hitting the dirt comes a little too quickly. Come on! Gary Cooper is a pretty tall guy and it’s like as soon as it is out of his hand you hear the sound.
So what bugs you?
Well, there’s one split moment in Reservoir Dogs (I know, not nearly a “classic” in the sense of High Noon, but still…) that just irks me. It’s at the very beginning, when Mr. Brown (Quentin) is rambling about giant dicks. Conversation turns away, and he tries to get it back on track by blurting out, “What the fuck was I talking about?”
The line itself is fine, but the delivery is just flat and stupid and stale and awkward. It’s like there were forty-eight frames cut from the movie and replaced with the word “BLAARGH!” across the screen.
Am I the only person who wasn’t bothered by this line?
If I had to choose something like this, I think I’d rather opt for “She gets home in half an hour…the graveyard shift…the the hospital,” from Pulp Fiction.
I dunno. Most people don’t notice it until after I mention it. It’s not important to the plot, or character development, or even the scene, so I imagine most people just bump right over it.
As for me, the fact that it’s so insignificant is what makes it jarring… it was as if Tarantino was trying to make a nothing-line come out as impressive or important.
Understandable, SPOOFE. I just went back and watched it again. It still doesn’t both me. To me, it seems organic. We’ve all been having relatively unimportant conversations that get derailed, and try to get our train of thought back. I’ve heard several people ask similar questions in similar manners. Not that that means anything, but it’s there.
The demonic voice in The Exorcist. I saw the film for the first time this Halloween, and everything about it had aged surprisingly well for a horror flick - except the ostensibly scary demon voice. Whose idea was it to represent a demonic possession with a foppish English accent? Kermit the Frog or Pee Wee Herman’s voice would have been scarier than that fussy, lilting tone! Should-have-been scary lines like “your mother’s in here with us” or “your mother sucks cocks in hell!” came across like Monty Python sketches with that voice!
Not really a minor thing - an entire scene, in fact: the Castle Anthrax scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Argh. It’s pretty much the only unfunny part of the movie: it’s out of place and feels like it was tacked on just so they could toss in some sex jokes to please…well, to please someone.
And Quentin’s coffee monologue from Pulp Fiction - another great movie aside from that bit.
Freejooky - in that scene, the demon was mocking the voice and accent of Burke Denning, who had just been killed. The demon doesn’t use that accent in the rest of the movie.
On topic: A few of my favorite movies are marred by the presence of my unfavorite actor, Kris Kristofferson. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia comes through with the least damage, I guess, but he’s in there.
I guess I just found it hard to believe that he was being so easily distracted. It seemed obvious to me that this was something Mr. Brown has thought about before, and a couple side comments about Toby didn’t seem like it’d derail 'im. He had another moment like that earlier in the conversation, though it seemed far more natural… I guess the second time was just too repetitive.
A bit obscure, but the Frankenheimer film Seconds - the mass nude-off scene in the woods. Completely irrelevant and inexplicable. What were they thinking?
To please me, I guess. I think the “And after the spanking, the oral sex!” is a laugh-out-loud funny moment. Also, in every Arthur tale I’m familiar with (granted, I haven’t read many), there is a bit where the knights are tempted to abandon their quest and have mad monkey sex instead (Also happened in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” which is an Arthur tale…). It may not be funny to you, but I don’t think it’s tacked on. It is part of the story, after all.
I watched Mr. Deeds Goes to Town yesterday, and in one scene, Mr. Deeds announces that the bad lawyer’s son drove home drunk in a taxi. I expected gasps of outrage, and everybody laughed. It’s not the movie’s fault at all, I know, but I just thought it was surreal. “Woooo, drunk driving is HILARIOUS! HAHAHAHAHA.” Like I said, not the movie’s fault, but it pulled me right out of it for a moment.
I know what you’re talking about, but I’m referring to the actual voice of the demon throughout the film - it’s never scary, and always has a “british man” sound to it.
I agree… I felt it was a perfect homage to that sort of thing, in a story. In Ye Oldene Goldene Dayse, they had this whole “purity of soul” thing (even though real knights were probably barbaric pigs), so sexual temptation was just as bad as physical danger.
The musical numbers in almost any Marx Brothers movie are a big waste of time. Harpo and Chico doing their specialties is one thing, but the songs from the young lovers (this is especially a problem in their later movies) are just awful. Only in A Night at the Opera are the songs worked into the plot at all, but even then you just sit there thinking “okay, enough, can we get back to the damn comedy please? That’s why I’m watching the movie…” The worst is A Day at the Races.
Yoda has the voice of Fozzie Bear {yes, I know it’s Frank Oz}, which has never failed to bug me since I first saw The Empire Strikes Back when it came out: I just keep expecting him to say, “Wocka wocka wocka!” - which may have actually improved the last two movies.
I did say almost- those are fine. I think this is one of those Warner Brothers vs. Paramount things. The Paramount movies did have the musical numbers, but they’re less annoying and more likely to have the Marxes in them. Most of the WB movies, forget it. I hope I get the Paramount box set soon (I’ve already got the other one), so I can see all of those movies and compare. But I’m pretty sure that’s how it works. I really like Harpo’s solos, even though they don’t add anything either- sometimes they’re really beautiful. But when it’s not the Marxes singing or playing, I just don’t care enough about these actors to listen to them sing. Or do anything at all.
For me, he was Grover (also Frank Oz, I know), plus the personalities seemed so similar when Luke first meets Yoda that I kept expecting him to launch into a Sesame Street routine.